Al Gore's Action
Figure Legacy

Other than the action figures themselves, there is one thing
feeding, nurturing and, in some ways, destroying our hobby. It
has been the source of great joy for me as well as of angst and,
in at least one case, anguish. It is the one thing that has done
more to both unify and destabilize our collector community than
anything else.

I’m using it right now.

So are you.

It is the Internet. I love it, and I hate it.

When I was a kid, there was no way to know what figures were
coming out for a given line until the new wave actually hit the
pegs and the cardback or enclosed pamphlet told the glorious tale.
I remember flipping a new G.I. Joe figure over in Toys R Us and
devouring the little explosion-backed boxes as quickly as my wee
brain would allow.

Whoa! A Cobra snow trooper!

Awesome! A new Snake-Eyes…with a wolf!

Dreadnoks!

I had similar experiences with Masters of the Universe, Transformers,
Star Wars, WWF and even lesser lines like Power Lords and Rambo.
Hell, I was even giddy when new Smurfs turned up at the card store.
Even as late as the mid-90s, as a collector, I can remember walking
into TRU with a friend and being floored by the new Playmates
Star Trek figures I had no clue were on the way.

Data as a Romulan! Hugh Borg! Wow!

Those days are over. Now, thanks to the Internet, there’s
not a figure, vehicle or playset we don’t know about months
in advance. Surprise has been replaced by anticipation, which
isn’t bad, but I can’t help but feel something has
been lost. Of course, something is lost in the transition from
childhood to maturity, however technical and alleged that maturity
may be, so I don’t know if it’s the advent of information
technology, my own diminished sense of wonder or a combination
of the two that makes finding new figures on the pegs much less
cathartic than it once was.

Perhaps ironically, the Internet giveth as well as taketh away
when it comes to nostalgia. There is a place collectors can go
and, with some persistence, find any toy he or she played with
growing up. Ebay is the reason I have the Generation 1 Transformers
I do, as well as my small, reconstituted collection of original
series Masters of the Universe figures. These toys are now considered
“vintage,” a term I find simultaneously amusing and
distressing.

Over my collecting career, I’ve used ebay to get into lines
I couldn’t afford as a kid, lines I was considered too old
for when they came out, and lines I missed altogether because
I was too busy growing up. Ebay has been a boon for children of
the 80s looking for one more go at what was once, or never was,
theirs.

But it that a good thing?

In my experience, going back to action figures of my youth has
been both richly rewarding and a colossal waste of time, money
and space. Through Mattel’s commemorative releases and originals
via ebay, I treasure the Masters of the Universe figures I mentioned
above, but with few exceptions I could do without the G1 Transformers.
I was in my last years of toy eligibility when BraveStarr came
out, so I was unable to get into them. A few years ago, I picked
up a few figures through ebay, and my interest waned. Same thing
happened with C.O.P.S. and Hasbro’s WWF line. On two occasions,
I dipped further into the action figure past then even I go and
purchased two mint-in-box Big Jim figures at no small cost. I
resold them, on ebay, for about what I paid for them.

Perhaps you can’t go home again. Or perhaps you realize,
more often than you’d like, the things you loved as a kid
aren’t as cool or well made or fun as you remember them.

Or maybe we’re the ones who aren’t as cool, well
made or fun as we used to be. The toys, after all, are the same.
It’s the people who’ve changed.

Before this gets too depressing, I’ll tell you something
I’m sure will make you feel better about your lot while
you laugh at mine.

Far too often, I’ve used ebay as a means to correct toy
elimination decisions. Last time we were together, I told you
about the latest in a series of major toy purges I’ve done
over the years. Well, there have been several occasions where
parts of those purges have found their way back to my doorstep
through ebay. I’ve collected Kenner’s Gargoyles line
twice. I’ve collected the Spawn movie line twice. I’ve
collected The Lost World: Jurassic Park line twice, and gotten
rid of it twice. I collected the Hasbro Planet of the Apes line
three times before it stuck.

By the way, it was the Tim Burton Apes line.

Provided I still have any audience at all following that last
sentence, you can see ebay has been quite enabling for me. Before
the Internet’s domination of our hobby, I’d either
have to live with the consequences of my choices, or learn to
make better ones. With ebay, thankfully, neither is necessary.

Another effect of ebay on our community is the I Must Have It
NOW factor. If it’s on the pegs anywhere in the United States,
and in some cases the world, it’ll be on ebay and you can
Buy It Now before any of your virtual friends can lay a keystroke
on it. Of course in most cases, they’ll be rewarded for
their impulse control with their pick of figures at retail price
while you paid twenty times as much for one with crossed eyes
and a loose hip, but that’s beside the point, you Got It
Then.

And honestly, what’s better than reading some sad sack’s
post on a message board about finding something that’s graced
your shelf for the last month and a half?

Nothing, and you know it.

As much a parody as that last statement may, or may not, have
been, it brings me to the single biggest effect the Internet has
had on my career as a collector, the message board.

I feel it no great admission to say I check a particular action
figure message board about a dozen times in any 24 hour period
and anything less leaves me feeling like a roadie in the port-a-potty
while the tour bus pulls away. If you know me away from this space,
you know which message board I mean because it’s the one
you’re all over, too. That place, as well as our own growing
forum here at AFI, has given me so much joy and camaraderie over
the years I cannot begin to express it. And I know I don’t
need to, because I know it’s done the same for you.

Those are the good days.

Perhaps due to my investment, or over investment, in what that
message board can do for my collection and for me as a collector,
there have been times I’ve been hurt by what’s been
said to me there. Once, now many years ago, I got into a political
debate (for which I now realize I was ill-prepared) and ended
up feeling the other person got the best of me to the point I
questioned my own views. That turned out to be good thing, as
now my views are more refined and stronger than they ever were.
Today, I don’t care for the person who forced me to scrutinize
my views at all, as I’ve seen his manner in other discussions
and debates, but I thank him for making me stronger. That said,
it took a long time to recover from the anger I felt toward myself
for letting an Internet person, for all intents and purposes a
non-person, affect me so deeply.

But of course my adversary that day is not a non-person, and
that’s the wonderful, horrible nature of message boards.

I have enemies. It’s a strange, almost surreal, and certain
petty thing to say in reference to the on-line action figure collecting
community, but it’s true. I suppose we all have a short
list of screen names whose appearance in a thread makes us clench,
but that’s a microcosm of life, is it not? Through school,
work and bitter, awkward socialization, we all encounter people
who take an instant dislike to us, or we to them. Likewise, there
are times when someone in the background of your life comes to
the fore and, through incident of malice or misunderstanding,
ends up on your bad side. So it is with Internet message boards,
I’ve found. Especially with those message boards entirely
populated with nerds.

But, if the dark side of human nature carries over to the virtual
world, does that not mean the light side prevails there too?

I have few friends in my “real” life. There’s
my wife, my best friend of 27 years, and that’s about it.
I work at home, so there’s no opportunity for work friends
and the friends I did have while working are, at their strongest,
faded acquaintances now. So, I may value my message board friends
more than most, but somehow I doubt it. I see what’s said
when one of us in crisis. I see what’s said when one of
us is in pain. I see what’s said when one of us accomplishes
something great or passes one of life’s milestone. I see
what’s said and I know there is a great deal more passing
over our DSLs than data and electricity.

A few years ago, someone I knew only in passing on the boards
sent me a Superman: The Animated Series Supergirl figure mint
on card simply because I said, to someone else, I didn’t
have one. More recently, someone I’ve always enjoyed talking
to, much more so than he suspects, I’d imagine, sent me
a Teen Titans Gizmo/Red X Robin 2-pack, for nothing, because he
knew how much I’ve anticipated the Gizmo figure and he happened
to find it first. These are events that yield wanted toys, certainly,
but for me, they’re so much more about what it’s like,
what it means, to be a part of something bigger than you are.
Something that, every once in a while, let’s you know it
knows you’re there.

Ten years ago, companies made what they made and parents either
bought it or didn’t. Today, industry professionals from
line managers at Mattel and ToyBiz to executives at smaller companies
like Mezco and Palisades listen to, and sometimes consult directly
with, the community of action figure collectors that’s risen
in the last decade. That’s important, and it will change
the toy industry even more than it has as we go forward, but it’s
not the most significant thing the Internet has given our hobby,
certain not the most significant thing it’s given me.

The Internet has made it ok to be who we are. It has encouraged
us, embraced us, coddled us, at times corrected us, but it is
always here for us. The Internet is a part of every collector’s
life and daily routine, but it should never be mistaken for anything
other than what it is, a vessel.

We, that is you and I, are what make our community so special.
We support, we talk, we listen, we provide, we take care, we love
and, yes, sometimes we hate each other not out of necessity or
compulsion, but because we choose to be a part of each others
lives. The Internet allowed us that opportunity, we took it, and
we have built something wondrous. A place where who you are is
exactly who you're supposed to be.

We never know what’s going to be on these news sites and
message boards when we sign-on each day. In that way, perhaps
we have reclaimed the childhood surprise we lost to the Internet
in the first place. But more importantly, through the currency
of common interest, we’ve found each other.